Aaron "Gimpy" Bader Gimps His Way to First Place...Gimpily*

1st Aaron Bader accumulated a perfect record, winning all four of his games and ending the night with a point spread of +280. He started off strong by defeating Mary Becker 457-371, but his phony UNERECT marred an otherwise well-played game. One of his other bingos, EONISMS, was made notable by the fact that Bryan Benwitz, sitting at a faraway table, played the EXACT SAME WORD just a minute later. Spoooooooky. This temporal and proximal concomitance can only be explained by supernatural means. Aaron continued his winning ways with a dominant 515-373 win over Charles Reinke, smothering him with five bingos (MUTINEER, GRASSING, word-of-the-week ARCHAEAN, CHARNEL, DISTANT). Charles got GNARLED to avert total and complete emasculation. An encounter with Richard Lauder saw the bingo tables get flipped on Aaron, but he overcame the 1-to-3 bingo deficit to take the victory, 419-385. The losing party got down TALLAGE, RETINENE, and SHEARING, but was somehow overcome by the winner's single bingo of HORNETS. Aaron sealed his perfect record in the final game by besting Bryan Benwitz, 396-378. Some quick arithmetic reveals that Bryan's score of 378 is significantly fewer points than he scored the last time he played Aaron (cough645cough).

2nd Charles Reinke averaged 473 points per game while going 3-1 +424. Excluding the anomalous loss to Aaron in the second round, he won each of his games by over 100 points. His first play in his first game was the portentous ZANINESS for 104, played against Gail Salm; he would later add PROSSIES and ANTEDATE to his list of bingos, and take the game 486-339. Another lopsided game was played against Thomas Reinke (are they related?); the final score was 474-308. Of note was Charles' 97-point YARROWS and 80-point GRANULAR; of lesser note was Thomas' LIBELANT for 61. By this point, having blocked out the memory of his loss to Aaron, Charles was drunk on the notion of his presupposed Scrabble superiority, and won his final game against Helen Flores by a score of 560-307. His bingos were plentiful: KRATERS (n. KRATER, an ancient greek vase), DOGEARS, ENHANCES, and REFLECT.

3rd Bryan Benwitz went 3-1 +233, but perhaps wished that the session ended early, as he was 3-0 +251 after three games were played. After taking out Sue Goldstein 449-256 (playing the ultra-spooky EONISMS to contribute to the win), he moved on to Thomas Reinke and coolly defeated the twin 400-365. Thomas played two bingos of OUTRANKS and SCOREPAD (both being able to be loosely tied to the Scrabble theme), while Bryan played just ISATINE (a word that cannot really be tied to the Scrabble theme since it's probably a chemical compound or something). Bryan fared similarly well against Helen Flores, winning a close game 435-412 despite challenging her 92-point WANGLED early on in the match. His own RENTIERS near the end sealed the deal. In the "FINAL ULTIMATE SHOWDOWN OF THE UNDEFEATEDS" in round four, Bryan faced off against Aaron Bader, but could not fell His Gimpiness*, despite playing two bingos (ARTISANS and the odd-looking TIRRIVEE) to Aaron's one (QUASHER).

With the ending of August and the arrival of September, the club season comes to a close. This year's club champion, with a winning percentage of 75.7% and a per-game average of 449, is none other than Charles Reinke! Rounding out the top three were Thomas Reinke (72.7% win rate, 441 average) and Aaron Bader (70.3% win rate, 424 average).

*don't play GIMPILY, it's not a word. Don't play GIMPINESS either.